Introducing Simple Scan

To install add the PPA and install the simple-scan package or build from source.

The GUI is a mess

Yes. This is the first functional release. The GUI is being redesigned for 0.8. The 0.7 release should contain all the functionality required for 1.0.

Who is simple scan for?

This application is designed for the 95% of users who just want to connect their scanner and quickly have the image/document in an appropriate format.

How does this relate to GNOME scan?

Simple scan does not use the GNOME scan to get the scan data. This is because Ubuntu 10.04 is a Long Term Support release and bringing the whole GNOME scan stack into main is risky (it was previously proposed for 10.04 but was not found to be stable enough). There is an open bug to change to gnomescan when that is appropriate.